InformationWeek

October 20, 1997

SAP Details Component Strategy

Enterprise vendor gets closer to Microsoft by integrating object technology

By Stefan Biskamp, InformationWeek Germany

nterprise application vendor SAP unveiled more details about the next major release of its flagship product, R/3, at its Technology Days Conference, held earlier this month in Karlsruhe, Germany.

R/3 4.0 is slated to ship at the end of this year. The release will mark SAP's first step in breaking up the monolithic software package into smaller components. The human resources module, for instance, will be separated from the rest of the suite, which will remain tightly integrated.

As for newly developed modules, such as the company's recently announced product con figuration, SAP plans to loosely tie them to R/3.

SAP also plans to change its release strategy with 4.0. Certain components, such as the HR module, will now be upgraded individually. "There will be a consolidation upgrade once a year to synchronize the releases," explains Gunther Tolkmit, a VP at SAP. "Users will no longer be forced to upgrade the whole suite at once."

Tolkmit also says SAP is moving toward a 64-bit architecture. "This is a must," he says. "Applications that will need a 64-bit architecture are the new supply-chain management modules," which SAP announced this summer. The company plans to release its first module-the Advanced Planner and Optimizer-sometime next year.

Analysts and users still have doubts about SAP's componentization strategy. "I don't know any company that will migrate directly to 4.0," says the IT manager of a large German chemical company. "Nobody wants to be the first, since the quality of new versions of R/3 has never been the best."

SAP is strengthening it s ties to Microsoft. At its Technology Days Conference, SAP announced support for Microsoft's object-oriented compound document standard. With this support, users can operate such desktop applications as Microsoft Office, Lotus SmartSuite, and Corel Office directly within R/3 4.0 without having to open separate windows. SAP says this will let customers reduce training and maintenance costs by leveraging their users' existing knowledge of office applications.

Back to News in Review